Five years ago: Jury selection began in Washington for the federal corruption trial of Sen. Ted Stevens,R-Alaska. (Jurors later found that Stevens had lied on Senate financial disclosure forms to conceal hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts and home renovations from a wealthy oil contractor, but the Justice Department later moved to dismiss the indictment because prosecutors had mishandled the case; Stevens lost his re-election bid.) Marjorie Knoller, whose dogs viciously attacked and killed her neighbor, Dianne Whipple, in their San Francisco apartment building in 2001, was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison after her second-degree murder conviction was reinstated. The U.S. Mint unveiled the first changes to the penny in 50 years, with Abraham Lincoln's portrait still on the obverse side, but new designs replacing the Lincoln Memorial on the reverse side.

One year ago: President Barack Obama campaigned before a crowd of 18,000 in Wisconsin, the home of GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan. Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi urged the government of Syria to bring an end to that country's 18-month-old civil war. In the aftermath of the killing of the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans, residents of the Libyan city of Benghazi protested at the compounds of several militias, vowing to rid themselves of armed factions and Islamic extremists.